Dominoes
by An Extremely Agitated Hedgehog
Summary: Inside: A hero makes a decision, and a villain is not as monstrous as he appears. A oneshot.


_I don't really know where this came from. I was just browsing on pinterest and saw a picture and then *poof* Oneshot! So, have fun with your feels, I guess!_

* * *

"Wait", the scientist pleaded, "You, you can't drop it in the middle of a city! Do you know the damage that it'll cause?"

Alfred paused. With the president out of the country and anyone else who could be suitably put in charge somehow not available, it was all up to him. He hadn't ever had to make an important decision like this in ... well ... he didn't think that he'd _ever_ had to decide something like this. He'd always left that up to his bosses to decide, and he'd just amicably gone along with whatever they'd said. But now, he simply paused.

 _Could_ he do something like this? Could he, one man, Nation, whatever, decide the fate of one-hundred-thousand people's lives? He could. With the press of a button, with one _word_ , he could end the whole war. It could finally be over. After so many years of watching while his friends and brothers fell one by one to the Nazi's, and then waking in horror one night as the Japanese bombed the shit out of Pearl Harbor, leaving so many people dead. He'd committed them to memory, those names. Every name of every man who'd died because he hadn't been smart enough to realize what was coming.

But if he could, the question was, _should_ he? Sure, Japan was responsible for the deaths of thousands of his people, and he should pay him back in kind, but did even he deserve total annihilation? He couldn't think, he _couldn't think!_ Alfred couldn't make a decision like this, it wasn't his place. The whole country, nay, the _world_ was waiting with baited breath. Just what was Alfred F. Jones going to do? Who was this young Nation really? Humanitarian? An _Empire_? The new Greece, Rome, Britain?

Britain?

He'd seen his brother fall. It hadn't been pretty. Of course, he'd been the start of it all, the first colony to say "You know what? No. I'm done with this shit", and leave, so he felt at least a little responsible. But how could he have known that he would be the one to push the first domino? He'd been young and idealistic, still was, as a matter of fact, and dominoes hadn't even been invented yet. His brother had been sick, dying, but he'd clung on, grabbed at anything he could get his hands on and dug himself out of his early grave. Until Germany, until the Blitzkrieg, until he was watching helplessly as Arthur writhed in agony while his people died, crushed by bombs and burned by fire. How could he have done that? How could Germany possibly allow something like that to happen? He was a Nation, he should know what it felt like to have your insides torn apart from the deaths of your people. But he did nothing.

He just. Did. _Nothing._

If Alfred did nothing now, would more people die? Would more of Arthur's, Francis', _his_ people be shot and cut and blown to bits by bombs? He clenched his fists, gritted his teeth. He knew what he had to do.

"Drop 'em", he told the scientist.

"—But", the man began, sputtering, probably wondering how anyone could give that command. Alfred almost laughed. This man had it easy. This man would never have to live with the lives of millions on his head.

"Do it".

* * *

Ludwig crossed over to the hospital bed, seeing Kiku lying there so still. He almost looked like he was sleeping. Maybe he was having good dreams. Ludwig wouldn't know. Japan's Nation had been comatose for a week now, ever since the first bomb on Hiroshima. The second hadn't helped things. The poor man had apparently woken for one brief moment before The Bomb had destroyed Nagasaki, gasped, and began to writhe in the sterile white bed like he was being electrocuted.

Several other Nations had been around, each one as shocked as the last, numb. No one had said anything. Feli had been here briefly, but more for Ludwig than anything. Yao had come too, and Ludwig had given him a moment alone. He came out red-eyed, and looked away from him, as if he blamed Ludwig for all of this. He probably did. Ludwig blamed himself.

He knew he shouldn't. It hadn't been him who'd dropped The Bomb, but it felt like it had. One thought kept racing through his head: If he hadn't. If he hadn't started this war in the first place. If he hadn't gone along with whatever his boss had said without blinking an eye. If he hadn't just kept going, kept killing, even though he knew it was wrong, that he was hurting people. But he had. He had done all of those things, and look where _that_ had gotten him. His ally, his _friend_ , comatose in a hospital bed. He would have been dead if not for his immortality. Just one more man in the growing list of victims.

But this blood wasn't on his hands. He had no idea that his one little decision would make all of this happen, would cause more deaths than the world had ever known. One domino, one push, and it all just fell to shit, didn't it? No, he hadn't pushed the button. _America_ had pushed it. He was the one to blame for everything. So why did Ludwig feel like all eyes were on him?

In fact, all eyes _were_ on him, in that room, at least. A little cough came from the door, and Ludwig turned. There, standing in the open doorway, a truly dismal expression on his open, youthful face, so bad that even his cowlick seemed to droop, stood the Bastard himself. He didn't look at Ludwig, probably couldn't bring himself to.

"What are _you_ doing here?" Ludwig asked, his eyes narrowing.

Alfred didn't say anything for a moment, just stared at Kiku lying still on the bed. Then, with a heavy sigh: "I ... I don't know".

He took a few steps into the room, paused, then took a few more, as if afraid that something from the pits of hell might come up and snatch him. They stood in silence for a few minutes. Neither one of them knowing what to say to the man that had been responsible for so much of their pain over the last few years.

Finally, Alfred broke the silence. "I just ... I wanted to be the hero, you know? I wanted to save everybody, to help them. But I just ended up making a bigger mess of things than they already were".

Smiling slightly, bitterly, Ludwig glanced sideways at him. "I think I know what you mean".

And that was all. No more needed to be said. They both just sat there until the sun began to set and the room grew dark. Each wallowing in guilt and regret, but somehow finding it impossible to leave. Because, in the end, they were more alike than they could have ever imagined.

* * *

 _Yeah, again, didn't really know I had it in me to write something like this. I was never really going to write about World War II, but suddenly this happened out of no where. Haha, I love it when that happens._


End file.
